CRICKET
India in Champions Trophy
India is to participate in next month’s ICC Champions Trophy in England and Wales, India’s Board of Control for Cricket (BCCI) said yesterday after a special general meeting. India did not submit a squad for the one-day international tournament by an April 25 deadline after the BCCI failed in a bid to halt a new revenue model being adopted by the International Cricket Council.
SWIMMING
Olympians miss drug tests
Australian Olympic silver medalist Madeline Groves and two other Australian Olympic swimmers are facing possible two-year bans for missing drug tests, reports said yesterday. Groves, two-time Olympian Thomas Fraser-Holmes and open water swimmer Jarrod Poort missed three drug tests in a 12-month period, the Sunday Telegraph reported. Swimming Australia said it was informed by the Australian Sport Anti-Doping Authority (ASADA) and the sport’s international governing body FINA that some team members might have failed to update their whereabouts. “ASADA and FINA are yet to finalize their processes and to confirm the final outcomes in relation to these matters,” Swimming Australia said in a statement.
SOCCER
NZ qualify for World Cup
New Zealand amateurs Auckland City will get to test themselves against the cream of world soccer at the FIFA Club World Cup in December after beating Team Wellington 2-0 in the second leg of the Oceania Champions League final yesterday. Auckland won the two-legged final 5-0 on aggregate after a 3-0 victory at home last week to give them a seventh consecutive Oceania title and ninth overall. Auckland, who finished third at the 2014 Club World Cup in Morocco, will enter a playoff for the quarter-finals at the tournament in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). They are likely to face UAE side al-Jazira on Dec. 6. Ramon Tribulietx’s side were already in the box seat after the first leg, but they did not sit back yesterday, with Ryan De Vries and Emiliano Tade notching goals after half time.
BASKETBALL
Kerr undergoes procedure
Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr has had a spinal cord leak procedure on his back and remains out indefinitely. Owner Joe Lacob discussed Kerr’s condition in an interview with Bloomberg Radio. Kerr did not travel to Salt Lake City for the Warriors’ 102-91 victory over the Utah Jazz on Saturday night that gave Golden State a 3-0 lead in the Western Conference second-round series. He saw a specialist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, on Friday. Kerr had back surgery about two years ago and has been dealing with complications. Assistant Mike Brown took over as acting coach for Game 3 of the first-round series against the Portland Trail Blazers.
RUNNING
Dogs join Bangkok fun run
From tiny Chihuahuas to 60kg mastiffs, hundreds of dogs and their owners yesterday jogged through a Bangkok park to raise money for charity. Nobody was racing against the clock at the “Maa-Rathon” — maa is Thai for dog — and there was no prize for the fastest dog and owner around the 1.7km course. Entrants paid US$30 per dog to raise funds for a new building at the Siriraj Hospital in Bangkok. “This way dogs can also contribute to help humans,” organizer Pimpicha Utsahajit said. The event started early to avoid temperatures above 36?C later in the day.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier